Tag: by Erin

poetry

getting your feet wet

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getting your feet wet

hiking I would totter
from tiny rock to tippy log
desperately trying to keep warm and dry
arms flailing
inevitably ending up
in the drink

but jogging here
in the meltwater mudseason days
there’s no way around it
gotta go through it
let the cold soggy seep in
then run your body warm

striding through the rushing
asphalt-path-turned-beaver-dam-outlet
there’s a shivery freedom
to not turning around
a satisfying slap and splash
to each saturated stride
we keep going together
fortified by mud

poetry

recipe

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recipe

not sugar and spice –
stuff of plantations
exploitation
tropical malaise –

I’m more made of
emerald moss and fiddlehead ferns
nodding jewelweed and shy trilliums
pliant giant kelp and playful otter fur
moonlight and starshine and lightning
crisp wintergreen and warm raspberries
quiet may apples and brisk creek water
brilliant wood lilies and half-closed gentians
retreating seafoam and irrepresible crane cries

I’m not so sweet –
more made from the must
of shale clay and duff
seasoned with ocean salt
scented with woodsmoke –
unable to be
otherwise

poetry

making a memory

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making a memory

when can we get apple pie again?
he asks wistfully
we can make apple pie
I say
we can? when?
we have everything we need
I say
how about tomorrow?

friends ask
what are you looking forward to most?
and when I say
slowing down
they’re puzzled –
it’s not the destination they expected

I’m looking forward to
taking the butter out
measuring the flour
letting him squish it all in his fists
taking our time while the dough
firms in the fridge

I’m going to enjoy
watching him hold the knife
and carefully turn apples white
then slice them thin

I will breathe in cinnamon
and hear the rough scrape of sugar
as the apples turn to flat leaves
of gooey brown

then we’ll roll out the dough
mound up the spiced fruit inside
deliberate about a pattern for the top
seal it all
and bake it to steaming

and the warm pride of making something sweet
won’t be a distant glow for him –
he’ll have tomorrow’s hot homemade pie
forever
or as close as our fallible minds allow

poetry

closure

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closure

beat your swords into plowshares
Isaiah says
in Colorado it’s different

first, poison the land while smelting your swords
so no person may call it home
then wait
for the weapon of choice to change
the killing to grow more efficient
the boom to bust
and the other beings to return

the hooved and winged and furred folk
don’t know about sarin gas
or plutonium’s halflife
they see only a quiet open space to be

today we pile out at Camp Hale
a fairly upbeat installation
known for fresh-faced skier boys
and I’m not thinking of death

the kids skitter off down the dirt road
and I stop at the sign
eyeing a closure
wondering what wildlife
we might be lucky enough to see

but it’s not like that
ASBESTOS
no human entry
human health closure
they’re too far to call back
and I’m not positive
where we are on the map

the whole area’s off-limits
to off-trail use, too
and when the beavers’ handiwork
forces us off the asphalt
I wonder –
unexploded ordnance?

I hold my breath
not knowing what safe looks like here
cursing the military-industrial complex
feeling conflicted about these
contaminated but public lands,
like Rocky Mountain Arsenal
and Rocky Flats
with their innocent burrowing owls
and elegant jumping mice
still greenwashing the worst of our nature

I don’t want plowshares left even
I just want to beat all those swords
to dust
proxies for the men who profit from them

mostly I want to stop worrying about where we step
and what we might breathe
just recklessly take in this blue sky
and bands of white clouds
without having to think
about the terrible things
we do to our own

poetry

happy trees

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happy trees

spring fills in the paint-by-number mountainsides
and broad swaths of beige-grey lighten up overnight
it’s a green so new it floats like mist
a luminous glow suspended above crowns
like a saint’s nimbus

you can’t make out a single leaf
instead there’s a cloud of burst buds
as if someone took a fan brush
rubbed in the taste of early snow peas
and dabbed the scene to life

the aspen stands come in the way they go out
patchy
one sprawling clone flashes on at a time
your brief chance to greet each individual
before it fades into forest

poetry

new to the neighborhood

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looking down at El Capitan Lodge from the slopes of Taylor Hill

new to the neighborhood

they peek out and test our scent
Goldie the ground squirrel
popping up from the rocks at the edge of the deck
the pair of pine grosbeaks
decorating the aspen before leaf-out
and the mountain chickadees
unabashedly evaluating a nest site
while I gawk five feet away

in mid-morning
violet-green swallows careen about the eaves
regardless of where we are
and any time we’re in the woods
the gray jays find us first

I try to strike up a conversation
introduce myself
but their eyes are on our palms
wondering whether we’re handout types

exactly 28 minutes after
hanging up the hummingbird feeder
I hear him pause midflight
I rush to the window
just in time to see him take a sip
seemingly not to his satisfaction
then he buzzes up a story
looks me in the face
as if to say
puh-lease!

we’ve seen deer tracks in the dirt
and woodrat scat in the shed
(beside the ripped-open recycling)
and this evening
a ball of sunset glow came trotting
down the hill to the east
lighting up the family room windows
jovial, unconcerned

we leapt up
and as if to put us in our place
the red fox squatted
marked her territory
and nonchalantly kept going down the road

we’re summer people, after all
unlikely to make friends
(despite our best efforts)
glad to settle for some
curious new acquaintances

poetry

eating apples

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some things are hard to swallow
thirty years believing
nothing was going down
all that ending
in daily chitchat
about nonsense

my grandfather
after his stroke
begging for ice
me not knowing
which was compassion
giving in or denying him

immune tonic
so vile I shake
each time I take a swig
sitting there on the shelf
through my coughing spell
an open challenge
I’m not ready to meet

the orange pills
that let me run
and keep my sight
but claimed my gut instead

our sweet son
grimacing at an apple
refusing to obey
his need to please

oh as antidote
to all the bitter herbs
stored in my little chest
I’m gonna chew on pine needles
and Old Man’s Beard
swallow big draughts
of sun and snow
wash them all down
with muddy meltwater
and the strong tea of tannin
make my own tincture
of silence and time
wait for the healing to come

poetry

meringue mountains

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meringue mountains

the black peaks sport a smooth white mantle
glossy in afternoon sun
the texture of whipped egg whites
not yet baked to toasty brown
cornices stretch along ridges
like pulled marshmallow cream

from here the slopes seem airbrushed smooth
but put yourself there
stung by angular crystals
blasted by wind with nothing in its way
all sculpted and smoothed
by a chisel and hand
we’re too small to see

poetry

baking on the boat ramp

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baking on the boat ramp

in not-quite-spring
when the world is more
white than green
and the campground gates
still slumber
you and I
find a steep bit of sun
make ourselves stars
or corpses
either way
we bake on the boat ramp
like dough on stone
letting the photons
wave their way
into our bodies
to cook out the cold
keep death at bay
put some Vitamin D
-elight into each
preoccupied cell

poetry

the little firs

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the little firs

after the sun
then sleet then hail then rain
snow thinks about moving on
leaving this patch of woods
lighting out for downstream parts

deciding, it transforms
grows supple energetic on the move
flows
buffs and magnifies
each once-mediocre rock
into a semi-precious find

that old stiff snow laughs down the mountain
singing a spring song
and at the margin
of each steep white-walled
cliff of reluctance
peeking out at the very edge of the melt
are the little firs
their small lithe bodies
bent but not broken
shrugging off winter’s frozen weight
straining toward summer
ready to make something green
from nearly nothing again